Castro Releases Podcast Episode on NATO Summit, Trump-Putin Meeting

WASHINGTON—Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and First Vice Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, today released a Diplomatic Cable episode on NATO summit and upcoming Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, Finland.

“As the President departed the 2018 NATO Summit for London and eventually will head to Helsinki for a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, our allies in Europe worry about our collective security agreements. At this point, it’s unclear if the President is more committed to NATO as an institution or to Russia itself,” said Rep. Castro. “This episode features former U.S. Ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush Victoria Nuland and Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe Ranking Member Chris Murphy who will discuss the President’s relationship with NATO since the 2016 presidential campaign, the importance of pushing back against Russian aggression in the region and Putin’s 2016 meddling in the U.S. election.”

“The NATO alliance is a political alliance in that Article 5 only works if each country makes the political decision to honor it. I think the President has already telegraphed that if the Russians were to move across the NATO boarder in a way that was difficult to decipher as to whether it was an attack or not, I don’t think our NATO allies right now can rely on the United States to have Europe’s back, and that’s already happened,” said Senator Murphy on the episode.

“In the spring of 2016, we didn’t know whether the Russian intent was simply to try to dirty-up our election and discredit American style democracy generally or whether they’d actually put their thumb on the scale for one candidate or another,” said Amb. Nuland on the episode. “We were simply asking for better intelligence resources to understand it, but then later recommended some counter measures to make it cost for them and counter measures that were strictly reciprocal.”

Future episodes of the Diplomatic Cable will include discussions with Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the United States Department of State Nick Burns, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA), and many other experts, practitioners, Members of Congress and American citizens. Episodes will focus on Russia’s interference in our election, repercussions of U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the consequences of a rising china, the crisis in American diplomacy and development, the forthcoming Middle East peace plan from the Administration and many other topics.